Political notebook Sept. 2: GOP Senate primary heats up quickly

Sep. 2, 2013

U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander

State Rep. Joe Carr

State Sen. Stacey Campfield

Gov. Phil Bredesen

U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn.

Councilman Steve Glover

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The Republican primary for Senate got off to a fast start last week, following state Rep. Joe Carr’s declaration that he’ll take on incumbent Sen. Lamar Alexander.

Carr got it started Aug. 26 with a press release declaring Alexander to be “more liberal than Democrat Jim Cooper,” the centrist Nashville congressman. Carr cited scoring by Heritage Action for America, Club for Growth and the Madison Project, groups that have criticized the two-term incumbent.

Nearly half of the run time consisted of footage of a back-and-forth argument between Alexander and President Barack Obama during a forum in 2010. The clip provided what is likely to be the longest stretch of C-SPAN3 viewing most Tennesseans ever will experience.

Alexander’s critics did not let the ad go by without a rebuttal. Senate Conservatives Fund, a political action committee, noted that Alexander had supported the insurance mandate in 2007. Back then, insurance mandates were more closely associated with Mitt Romney and Republican policy wonks than Obama and the Democrats, it ought to be noted.

Nonetheless, the PAC called on Alexander to make up for his past heresy, specifically by voting against upcoming legislation to keep the federal government in business. Tea party groups want to block the spending resolution in order to keep the Obama administration from implementing the health-care law.

A busy week, all in all. And still 11 months until primary day.

— Chas Sisk

Campfield suggests Bredesen for Senate

State Sen. Stacey Campfield — a guy that Phil Bredesen confides in, surely — is spitballing the possibility that the former Tennessee governor could jump into the Senate race if the primary between Alexander and Carr were to get close.

In a posting to his blog, Campfield laid out a pretty good argument for Bredesen. Campfield predicted (probably accurately) that a defining issue will be health care, a Bredesen specialty, and Campfield said (probably also correctly) that Bredsen is the only Democrat in Tennessee with the name recognition and approval ratings to mount a credible challenge.

There’s just one catch: Bredesen says he isn’t interested. There’s been speculation that Bredesen would run for the Senate since he left office in January 2011, first against Sen. Bob Corker in 2012 and now against Alexander or Carr. We even asked him back in December whether he would run in 2014. Bredesen has snuffed such talk repeatedly, and when we asked him again last week, he said there had been “no change.”

But it does seem like a bruising GOP primary battle could create an opening for the right Democrat. Like most successful politicians, Bredesen knows the importance of timing.

— Chas Sisk

Cohen meets with citizens from afar

Some members of Congress have been criticized lately for not engaging their constituents in town hall meetings, the kind of gathering where citizens can direct their questions, their complaints and even their unchecked, impolitic rage at their representatives in Washington.

Cohen’s office announced Wednesday afternoon that he would hold a “telephone town hall meeting” four hours later. After the event, a second news release said Cohen, who was in Washington, had met with more than 6,000 constituents — albeit at a safe remove from any threat of physical confrontation — for about an hour.

Cohen’s office said he’s held both telephone and traditional town halls regularly. It’s easy to see how the telephone kind might appeal to a politician: no muss, no fuss, no travel, no chances of awkward encounters winding up on YouTube and Twitter.

But if you can only hear the questioner’s voice and can’t see the veins throbbing in his or her forehead, is it the same?

— Michael Cass

Councilman wants charter freeze

Adding to the drumbeat on the rising cost of charter schools, Metro Councilman Steve Glover wants the state to grant Nashville a “moratorium” on approving new charters.

Glover, a Republican and a former school board member who chairs the council’s Education Committee, has introduced a non-binding resolution that would ask state Education Commissioner Kevin Huffman for a charter moratorium in Nashville until Metro’s revenue projections “improve substantially” or it finds ways to improve its budget outlook.

“It’s proven: There are out-of-pocket costs over and above just the money following the students,” Glover said of the state’s funding mechanism for charters. “You still have all the ‘fixed-costs’ with your regular public schools.

Separately, Nashville Mayor Karl Dean last week gave his initial reaction to the opinion delivered by Washington D.C. attorney John Borkowski. He simply called “interesting,” adding “the attorney whose opinion matters most on this is the Attorney General of the State of Tennessee.”